Changing Digital Landscape Research Articles

#SpeakingTheirLanguage: Engaging with young people’s mental health in a digital landscape

Exploration of young people’s mental health conversations on social media and the use of ‘secret hashtags’ on Instagram. Consideration of the role of clinical psychologists in recruiting ‘allies’ to engage in mental health dialogue in a changing digital landscape.

Public engagement with climate imagery in a changing digital landscape

Despite extensive exploration into the use of language in climate change communication, our understanding of the use of visual images, and how they relate to public perceptions of climate change, is less developed. A limited set of images have come to represent climate change, but rapid changes in the digital landscape, in the way media and information are created, conveyed, and consumed has changed the way climate change is visualized. We review the use of climate imagery in digital media (news and social media, art, video and visualizations), and synthesize public perceptions research on factors that are important for engaging with climate imagery. We then compare how key research findings and recommendations align with the practical strategies of campaigners and communicators, highlighting opportunities for greater congruence. Finally, we outline key challenges and recommendations for future directions in research. The increasingly image‐focused digital landscape signals that images of climate change have a pivotal role in building public engagement, both now, and in future. A better understanding of how these images are being used and understood by the public is crucial for communicating climate change in an engaging way.This article is categorized under: Perceptions, Behavior, and Communication of Climate Change > Perceptions of Climate Change

Development of an institutional framework to guide transitions into enhanced blended learning in higher education

The rapidly changing digital landscape is having a significant influence on learning and teaching. Our study assesses the response of one higher education institution (HEI) to the changing digital landscape and its transition into enhanced blended learning, which seeks to go beyond the early implementation stage to make the most effective use of online learning technologies to enhance the student experience and student learning outcomes. Evidence from a qualitative study comprising 20 semi-structured interviews, informed by a literature review, has resulted in the development of a holistic framework to guide HEIs transitioning into enhanced blended learning. The proposed framework addresses questions relating to the why (change agents), what (institutional considerations), how (organisational preparedness) and who (stakeholders) of transitions into enhanced blended learning. The involvement of all stakeholder groups is essential to a successful institutional transition into enhanced blended learning.(Published: 2 August 2017)Citation: Research in Learning Technology 2017, 25: 1973 - http://dx.doi.org/10.25304/rlt.v25.1973

Opportunities for Academic and Research Libraries and Wikipedia

Wikipedia supplements library resources with timely, useful information; acts as a tool for librarians answering reference questions; provides a pathway to primary and secondary sources and citations. Wikipedia helps library clients perform research; and provides a vital platform for recording local knowledge. Public libraries can expose both their staff and patrons to more complex and sophisticated strategies for dealing with the changing digital landscape. Wikipedia has the potential to point clients to libraries, where resources in their areas of interest can be found. Wikipedia-library engagement connects Wikipedia with the important role libraries play in bridging inequalities in access to information. Active collaborations between Wikipedia editors and academic and research libraries to advance the free flow of information which supporting sustainable development around the world. These collaborative opportunities offer a range of outcomes that could benefit academic and research libraries including crowdsourcing, community engagement, rapid models for online publishing, student writing assignments, etc. For the Russian National Public Library for Science and Technology both projects are equally of interest. (http://2016.ifla.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/08/112-IFLAWikipediaAcademicandResearchLibrariesDiscussioDRAFT.pdf)

Opportunities for Public, Academic and Research Libraries and Wikipedia. Part 1

Several libraries and Wikipedia agreed on developing cooperation. This initiative has been translated into two Public Projects presented at Session 112. Library engagement and Wikipedia during IFLA General Conference (August 13-19, Columbus, USA). Wikipedia supplements library resources with timely, useful information; acts as a tool for librarians answering reference questions; provides a pathway to primary and secondary sources and citations. Wikipedia helps library clients perform research; and provides a vital platform for recording local knowledge. Public libraries can expose both their staff and patrons to more complex and sophisticated strategies for dealing with the changing digital landscape. Wikipedia has the potential to point clients to libraries, where resources in their areas of interest can be found. Wikipedia-library engagement connects Wikipedia with the important role libraries play in bridging inequalities in access to information. Active collaborations between Wikipedia editors and academic and research libraries to advance the free flow of information which supporting sustainable development around the world. These collaborative opportunities offer a range of outcomes that could benefit academic and research libraries including crowdsourcing, community engagement, rapid models for online publishing, student writing assignments, etc. For the Russian National Public Library for Science and Technology both projects are equally of interest.

Tapping into user habits to create a strong digital presence

This paper discusses the evolution of social media, user habits and how to create an online brand presence. It describes the structure of the global social media accounts for one of the world’s top three confectionery brands, KitKat®, as well as the importance of understanding and embracing internet culture. It also considers the importance of brand tone of voice, understanding a brand’s audience online and the benefits of experimenting with new formats and apps, and looks at the growing culture of immediacy and the changing digital landscape.

The mystery of the missing metadata (or the importance of preserving embedded metadata in an imaging workflow): Part 1

Ensuring metadata work in a changing digital landscape is important if people hope to see any return on investment. As born-digital content continues to grow, the cost to manage this content grows as well. This paper focuses on the use of both old and new forms of International Press Telecommunications Council and other XMP metadata embedded in digital photographs to make them findable in a digital asset management system. This first instalment explains why metadata are important and should be preserved throughout an imaging workflow. The second instalment covers methods and tools for testing images at pain points within the workflow.

Conflict[ed] Reporting

This special issue of Photography & Culture is based on an international symposium hosted by Media@McGill in Montreal, Canada, in November 2012. Titled Conflict[ed] Reporting: War and Photojournalism in the Digital Age, the symposium brought together communications and arts scholars alongside war reporters and photojournalists to raise a light to questions including the following: Has digital technology altered the practice of conflict photography? What new ways could professional photographers seek to engage compassion-fatigued audiences? What are the ethical implications of publishing amateur-produced content in the mainstream media? The aim of this special issue of Photography & Culture is to elaborate on this theme, among others, with a collection of essays and images from the participants of the symposium (Susan Carruthers, Donald Matheson, Louie Palu, Sharon Sliwinski), as well as additional contributors (Ariella Azoulay, Reilley Bishop-Stall, Liam Kennedy), whose work tackles the visibility and, subsequently, the optics of contemporary war in a changing digital landscape.

Making Connections

The future of the traditional news media in the changing digital landscape is a topic of much scholarship and debate as newspaper circulations and advertising revenues plummet across the globe and audiences become increasingly spoilt for choice when it comes to accessing news and information. At the same time there has been a flurry of interest in the role and place of small news outlets dubbed local, community and regional publications. This paper aims to theorise the role and place of small newspapers to connect people with each other. In doing so, it reconceptualises the theory of social capital as it relates to small newspapers. It argues that the small-town press is in a particularly powerful position to actively connect people with each other, across physical and digital spaces and public/private domains. It also argues the need to recognise and study the more subtle ways news outlets foster connections between everyday, ordinary people. I draw on the concept of “mediated social capital” and its associated prisms of bonding, bridging and linking as a way of understanding this in regards to small newspapers. “Mediated social capital”, repositions social capital theory to consider the small newspaper's ability to connect people as a resource of advantage which it may utilise to build or maintain its position of power. The concept provides scope to consider the role of local media to consciously and unconsciously connect people within its networks with one another, across digital and physical spaces, to control the information that connects people, and to benefit from that power. It also acknowledges the inequalities that may arise from this. Importantly, mediated social capital extends beyond discussions about the democratic ideal of the press to acknowledge the role of the news media in shaping the everyday interactions and situations in which people might connect with one another.

Providing Students with an Easystart to Higher Education

The transition to higher education can be problematic for some students as they adapt to institutional procedures and degree level working at the same time as developing new social networks. To help facilitate these complex transitions institutions are increasingly turning towards digital technologies to provide both flexible access to resources and improved communication. This paper outlines the key issues associated with students' initial transitions to higher education and explores the challenges faced by academics designing induction procedures and programmes. The emerging role of digital technologies in supporting students' transitions into Higher Education, against the backdrop of a changing digital landscape in one institution is discussed and an evaluation of the easystart induction programme at Manchester Metropolitan University presented as a case study.

From Subject Selectors to College and Interdisciplinary Teams

In addition to enduring a recent renovation, the staff of the J. Willard Marriott Library underwent reorganization. This was a response to the changing digital landscape, reduction in budget, and student requests for one central space to go to, to obtain technology and reference assistance. In the Public Services Department the subject departments were reorganized into task-oriented departments. The traditional outreach and collection development duties of subject librarians were addressed by the development of a second layer of organization, the college and interdisciplinary teams. This article addresses reorganization of the Public Services Department in general and the response of the science and engineering personnel specifically.

Digital Data Practices and the Long Term Ecological Research Program Growing Global

This paper explores data practices in a Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) setting. It describes a number of salient data characteristics that are specific to the LTER program and outlines some central features of the curation approach cultivated within the US LTER network. It goes on to identify recent developments within the international LTER program relating to data issues: increasing heterogeneities due to networking, integration of data from additional disciplines, and new technologies in a changing digital landscape. Information management experience within LTER provides one example of the recurrent balancing inherent to the work of data curation. It highlights (1) taking into account the extended temporal horizon of data care, (2) aligning support for data, science and information infrastructure, and (3) integrating site and network-level responsibilities. LTER contributes to the inquiry into how to manage the continuity of digital data and to our understanding of how to design a sustainable information infrastructure.

JSTOR and the changing digital landscape

PurposeThis paper seeks to describe the development and current operation of JSTOR, and to identify in particular the cost benefit of JSTOR in terms of cost per article.Design/methodology/approachThe paper is descriptive. Amidst ongoing and dramatic changes to digital communications, JSTOR serves as a microcosm for observing the trends affecting how researchers, teachers, students and librarians access and use information for scholarly purposes. This paper provides background and reports progress on JSTOR's mission to preserve scholarly works and facilitate broader access to them. It also examines usage patterns over the years of JSTOR's operation to discern shifting expectations of users, and consider the impact of Google indexing on broadening the visibility of content both within the scholarly community and beyond it. Finally, the paper analyzes trends in cost per use experienced by a selection of institutions at the high, median, and low levels of usage, as a means to consider the value of shared digital resources.FindingsJSTOR usage has expanded exponentially. Key drivers have been: continuously increasing the amount of content in the archive; growth in the number of participating institutions; greater breadth of discipline coverage, drawing in more users at participating institutions; and an expanding array of linking partners, including Google. Google indexing has had the further impact of exposing the content to a very much broader audience, creating a new set of opportunities and challenges for the organization.Originality/valueThe paper gives an up‐to‐date description of the development of the first organization to provide a service giving access to complete back runs of digitized journal titles. It also provides metrics for analyzing usage trends and determining value for cost that may help librarians manage the increasingly complex demands on library space and budgets.